Tempest Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

You must have heard of many “-nauts” like astronaut, cosmonaut, taikonaut (and indian “vyomanaut”?!?). Those are different verbal versions of human in space, mostly in political accent. But I’m sure “Robonaut” going to be omnipresent in vocabulary of any country. So it is sort of first ‘Robonaut’, in official definition the first dexterous humanoid robot in space, which is successfully put to “wake up” in outer space, well, on board ISS (International Space Station).

It was brought to ISS by Space Shuttle Discovery in February. Fortunately, it was not a part of russian cargo shipment which went to ocean after unsuccessful launch couple of weeks ago. Robonaut was dormant for few months on ISS and finally it got a “wake-up” call. And moreover, it has officially started tweeting. Catch him/her at @AstroRobonaut.

It’s also answering questions from followers that provide information about how the robot operates and the tasks it will be performing while on board the space station.

From its tweets, people can learn that the robot is not manning the computer on his own (“The team that created me helps me tweet”); that it has no legs at the moment but that eventually will be getting some (“I will be getting some legs to help me move around in zero-g”); and that the robot has some autonomy (“I require ground control, but I can also respond to my environment within controlled specifications.”).

(Source: informationweek.com)

R2, Robonaut 2, is a part of NASA Robonaut program, a collaboration between NASA and GM. R2 is fully functional and it is going to perform some basic “robotic” task on ISS. R2 is also an experiment for the moment, but in future it will do more than that. Of course, it is going to be useful in future missions, perhaps deep space travel, where Robonauts can be deployed before sending astronauts (cosmonauts, taiko…).

Image source: flickr.com
News Source: informationweek.com

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An old man dies. A young woman lives. A fair trade.
- John Hartigan, Sin City.

30 years old space shuttle mission has come to an end. It has allowed to write a next chapter in Space exploration in the form of Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEO) which combines departments under Space Operations and Exploration Systems of NASA.

Although many were sad about the demise of space shuttle program, it was a perfect time for its end. It frees resources and assets for next step in space research, because private industries are showing interest in low-Earth orbit missions. Now more efforts are needed for missions beyond these orbits. This new HEO Mission directorate will do the same in near future. And it is great to see that NASA is not alone. Europeans, Chinese, Russians and even Indians are showing keen interest in deep space explorations.

We didn’t manage to see the future forecasted by Arthur C. Clarke in his epic novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey. But we are definitely not that far. Old man (Space Shuttle) had to die to let young lady (Deep Space Vehicle) live.

Source: NASA Reshuffles to Prepare for the Next Chapter in Space Exploration | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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“The astrosat will turn out to be a great boon for x-ray observations, especially in India, since it does not have one of its own. It will allow users to study the spectrum and time variation of emission produced by cosmic sources. Determining the size of cosmic objects will also be possible while one can also measure the gravitational field, which will tell the nature of objects.”

Source: Astrosat to boost X-ray astronomy – The Times of India.

Artistic impression of CoRoT 9b via ESO

It is the first time that the discovered planet using space mission has been studied using follow-up observations from ground based telescope. This will be new trend of follow-up observations of the planets found using accompaning dedicated expensive space missions, which will give fresh new air of understanding into planetary sciences studies in years to come. This time the space mission was CoRoT and earth based well-known planetary search instrument HARPS installed on 3.6 m telescope at La Silla Paranal observatory, Chile and the planet is called “CoRoT 9b”.

“Corot-9b is the first exoplanet that really does resemble planets in our solar system,” adds lead author Hans Deeg. “It has the size of Jupiter and an orbit similar to that of Mercury.”

It should be noted that orbit of Mercury doesn’t mean that it is as close to the host star as Mecury to the Sun, but rather it is the orbital period, which is similar to Mercury.

Corot-9b is special in that its distance from its host star is about ten times larger than that of any planet previously discovered by this method. And unlike all such exoplanets, the planet has a temperate climate. The temperature of its gaseous surface is expected to be between 160 degrees and minus twenty degrees Celsius, with minimal variations between day and night. The exact value depends on the possible presence of a layer of highly reflective clouds.

These results make this planet already very exotic. This planet is definitely going to be studied over and over again in the near future. Perhaps this will advance our knowledge and methods to understand the atmosphere and other characteristics of exoplanets yet to be discovered. Kepler mission is already becoming highly productive mission and it will provide not just dozen but perhaps many more still undiscovered “normal” planets for detail studies.

source: First Temperate Exoplanet Sized Up

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Image via Wikipedia

New ground-breaking thermal images obtained with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and other powerful ground-based telescopes show swirls of warmer air and cooler regions never seen before within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, enabling scientists to make the first detailed interior weather map of the giant storm system linking its temperature, winds, pressure and composition with its colour.

This spot has been sort-of recognizable identity for this huge planet. Amateur astronomers can also watch it from small telescopes, but why and how it is there was long a mystery. This spot is as big as 3 earths together. If it is to be a storm, then it is perhaps the biggest storm in our solar system. But now better instruments allow to map it in details to understand its characteristics.

The thermal images were mostly obtained with the VISIR [1] instrument attached to ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, with additional data coming from the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. … VISIR allows the astronomers to map the temperature, aerosols and ammonia within and surrounding the storm. Each of these parameters tells us how the weather and circulation patterns change within the storm, both spatially (in 3D) and with time.

These observations allowed to put some contraints on scientific speculations on the composition of these spots. And the final findings were:

“This is the first time we can say that there’s an intimate link between environmental conditions — temperature, winds, pressure and composition — and the actual colour of the Great Red Spot,” says Fletcher.

Source: Jupiter’s Spot Seen Glowing

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via dailygalaxy.com

Orion nebula is the nearest star forming region and it is a great observatory for further research star and planet formation. The new results of discovery of organic molecule in the nebula shall definitely change the probability equation of finding life elsewhere than on earth.

The Herschel Space Observatory using the telescope’s heterodyne instrument for the far infrared has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potentially life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy known to be one of the most prolific chemical factories in space, although the full extent of its chemistry and the pathways for molecule formation are not well understood.

The ro-vibrational transitions in molecules put their complex signature in the infrared spectra and new better instruments coming up for near to far infrared region is going to shed more light on existence of life-forming precursor molecules.

Most past discoveries came from identifying a molecule’s pattern in the laboratory, then searching with a radio telescope for that set of spectral lines in a region of sky. So far, more than 140 different molecules have been found that way in interstellar space.

The new study reverses the process. The astronomers will use the GBT (Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope) to study a cloud of gas and dust in detail, finding all the spectral lines first, then later trying to match them up to molecular patterns using data-mining software.

Larger survey in this spectral range in other star formation regions will help us understand how solar system like ours was at all possible. With availability of these instruments, the future seems very optimistic in this field.

Source: The Orion Nebula: A Vast Organic-Molecule ‘Factory’ -Precursor to Life
Original Source: http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2008/molmine/

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Timeline of the universe

Remarkably simple display of the human related timeline of the universe. We know what is our place in spatial universe, but even in the age of the universe, it doesn’t make much difference. I liked this Mac-like graphic to convey this message to us. Click the picture above to see our place in the lifeline of the universe.

Source: Issue 018: Graphic Statement – The Slow Issue – GOOD.

In earlier post we have seen how NASA‘s budget has changed over the time. Well, this is yet another infographic on the same timeline. This one gives detailed view of money sanctioned in nominal as well as percentage of the budget term. At the same time one can see which space mission profited from it. In my honest opinion, this is much better representation of the budget from infographic point of view.

Source: Cool Infographics – Cool Infographics – NASA’s budget timeline [infographic].
Original Source: http://ripetungi.com

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After years of successful concealment, the most primitive stars outside our Milky Way galaxy have finally been unmasked. New observations using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have been used to solve an important astrophysical puzzle concerning the oldest stars in our galactic neighbourhood — which is crucial for our understanding of the earliest stars in the Universe.

Primitive stars are supposed to be very old with very less metal content. They are believed to have come into being at very early stage of the evolution of the universe, i.e. less amount of heavy elements were created. That’s why these stars are termed extremely metal-poor stars.

Cosmologists think that larger galaxies like the Milky Way formed from the merger of smaller galaxies. Our Milky Way’s population of extremely metal-poor or “primitive” stars should already have been present in the dwarf galaxies from which it formed, and similar populations should be present in other dwarf galaxies. “So far, evidence for them has been scarce,” says co-author Giuseppina Battaglia. “Large surveys conducted in the last few years kept showing that the most ancient populations of stars in the Milky Way and dwarf galaxies did not match, which was not at all expected from cosmological models.”

That means the best way to look for such stars would be in dwarf galaxies which reside just outside our galaxy. These are really for normal telescope reach. Yet there had been observations with multi-object instruments FLAMES. But it didn’t give any convincing results. The follow-up spectral observations on UVES and improved computational models, it has been possible to detect such objects. In last couple of decades there has been great improvement in theoretical models of almost any kind of stars, perhaps due to better computational facilities. But these news results are proving very valuable for the understanding of our galaxy and the early evolutionary stages of the universe.

The astronomers also confirmed the almost pristine status of several extremely metal-poor stars thanks to much more detailed spectra obtained with the UVES instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. “Compared to the vague fingerprints we had before, this would be as if we looked at the fingerprint through a microscope,” explains team member Vanessa Hill.

Although observations are time-consuming, the future in this field looks very optimistic. There’s only need for a new quest!

Source: No Place to Hide: Missing Primitive Stars Outside Milky Way Uncovered.

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